Taiwan gas explosion kills 22

Beijing: Multiple gas explosions in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung have killed at least 22 people and injured 270 others, according to local fire authorities.

In one of Taiwan’s worst accidents of this kind, at least four firefighters were among the dead and 22 others injured, including first responders who were trying to contain a gas leak in the city’s Cianjhen district, which ignited what is believed to be the first of numerous explosions late on Thursday night.

The force of the blasts overturned cars and left wide craters in the streets in the city of 2.7 million people.

Blasts ripped through the city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. Photo: AFP

One witness said at first he thought some "poisonous gas" had leaked from the old railway and a construction site of Kaohsiung's light rapid transit system.

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"I saw fire spurting, ripping off some covers of ditches. It was terrifying," he said, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

Other witnesses described the force of the blast as being similar to “a volcanic eruption”. Debris was blown several metres high as broken layers of asphalt stacked up “like a battlefield”.

The force of the blasts overturned cars and left wide craters in the streets. Photo: Reuters

"I saw lots of cars and motorcycles with engines all over on the road, and doctors checking if bodies were dead or alive," Chen Guan-yuan, who was at the scene shortly after the blast, told the BBC, adding that the blasts "caused a long range hole, like a huge cave".

Firefighters from neighbouring cities as well as hundreds of troops were called in to help and worked through the night, as the casualty count steadily rose.

President Ma Ying-jeou called for “full-scale rescue efforts”.

Witnesses described the force of the blast as being similar to “a volcanic eruption”. Photo: AFP

Several petrochemical plants are located in Kaohsiung. It is not known which of the companies' pipelines is to blame for the explosions, which ripped through several streets in the southern port city, the Central News Agency said.

Kaohsiung was still reeling from another tragic disaster last week, when a TransAsia flight departing from the city's airport crash-landed in inclement weather, killing 48 of those on board.